Time for another Think about it Thursday with my friend Ian Juby, creation scientist.

This week's Question:

Okay, Ian, what about dinosaurs? If they didn't live millions of years ago, then when? And why did they go extinct?

Excellent question – when did the dinosaurs live? Why did they go extinct?

Actually, I won't answer the second part of that question just yet, but I will instead change the question: ARE the dinosaurs extinct?

…and just to leave things suspensful, I'm going to leave the answer to that question hanging for anotherThink about it Thursday.:)

When did the dinosaurs live?

Let's go to the Bible first – what does the Bible say about it? While the Bible does not specifically mention dinosaurs in the Creation account, it also doesn't specifically mention cows, pigs, dogs, elephants, etc… But we can figure out which day God created them.

On day 5, God created the sea creatures and the flying creatures. So the giant ocean-going creatures people equate with the dinosaurs (like the plesiasaurs, which aren't really dinosaurs even though everyone thinks of them as dinosaurs) would have been created on day 5. The Pterodactyls would have been created on that day as well, because they were "flying creatures."

On day 6, things got really interesting – that's when God created the land creatures. Cows, elephants, horses, and….dinosaurs!
God also created people on day 6 – which now provides us with a significant starting point in looking for scientific evidence: according then to the Bible, people and dinosaurs lived together. Yet according to evolution, dinosaurs became extinct at least 60 million years before humans ever evolved. In fact, Louis Jacobs, the former president of the society of vertebrate paleontology (the society of dinosaur diggers) put it in no uncertain terms when he said that evidence of people and dinosaurs living together would
"…dispel an Earth with vast antiquity. The entire history of creation, including the day of rest, could be accommodated in the seven biblical days of the Genesis myth. Evolution would be vanquished." (In Quest of the African Dinosaur, p.261)

Basically, such evidence would mean:

1. the earth is young,
2. the Biblical account of Creation is correct,
3. evolution would be proven wrong.

But wouldn't you say this fossil would be good evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived together?

The Delk track, photo by David Lines, courtesy of theCreation Evidence Museum.

A human stepped in mud. Shortly thereafter a dinosaur also walked in the mud and its middle toe clipped the human footprint. The mud then hardened into rock like concrete. Judging by this evidence, I would say this must have occured during the onset of Noah's flood. Years later, the erosion of the Paluxy River in Texas (where this was found) dug up the rock layers, exposing the footprints.

There were many human footprints fossils found among, and sometimes in, the dinosaur tracks this area is famous for. This is a cast of the Taylor trail -3B track, one of fourteen dinosaur tracks in a trail in which a human then walked in the steps of the dinosaur.

The rock islimestone, which is where we get concrete from. How long do you have to make footprints in concrete before it hardens? A few hours maybe? So obviously, these tracks had to have been made within hours of each other.

In Dinosaur Valley State Park, there is a shelf of rock called the "park ledge" which contains both dinosaur and human footprints.

Whenever I give a children's talk, I like to bring out this cast and play "Cinderella." We get some children to try their feet, and eventually we find one that's a perfect fit. It's a child's fossil footprint! There were five of them, right, left, right, and then two standing beside each other at the end of the trail. That footprint is still there today, although it's usually buried under dirt and has been eroded for over 50 years now.

It is on the same rock layer as dinosaur tracks!

So from all of this, combined with Louis Jacob's expertise, we can conclude:

1. The earth is young – some 6,000 years old.
2. The Biblical account of Creation is correct.
3. Evolution and the millions of years isincorrect.

Therefore we can conclude that the dinosaurs lived approximately 6,000 years ago and were created on the same day as Adam and Eve.

So all of those dinosaurs that we find as fossils now – what killed them? That will have to wait until nextThink about it Thursday.

Thanks, Ian! That's a lot to think about!